Wednesday, April 09, 2008

Warmie Psychic: Global Headache Coming!

Wooo Wooo Warmie, the Global Warming Psychic, predicts that within the next 24 hours, you'll have a splitting headache.

How does Wooo Wooo have such intimate knowledge of the inner passages within your skull? Is he wired into some sort of universal sinus vibe? No, I think he's just read this:

WASHINGTON, April 9 (AP) - (Kyodo)—Global carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels reached an all-time high of 8.38 billion tons in 2006, a U.S. environmental think tank reported Wednesday.

The figure, released by the Earth Policy Institute in Washington, is up 20 percent since 2000 and up 35 percent since 1990, the baseline year of the Kyoto Protocol global pact to combat climate change.

The report said global CO2 emissions have grown at an average annual rate of 3.1 percent this century, above the worst-case scenario laid out by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that annual emissions were projected to grow 2.3 percent between 2000 and 2010.

Oh no! That sounds terrible! Just awful! What's going to happen next?

"With CO2 emissions currently exceeding the worst-case scenario, we can expect that temperature and sea level rise will likely do the same," it said.

AAIIIIIEEEE!!! What can we do to save ourselves?

"It is clear that to prevent the most serious and irreversible effects of climate change, the world must act swiftly to substantially cut emissions," it said.

That ... and perhaps send a nice big check to the good folks at the Earth Policy Institute, which you need to know two things about.

First, they are anti-capitalist and anti-progress. They say so themselves:

The Earth’s capacity to support the economy continues to deteriorate. ... Our modern civilization is in trouble. We have created a bubble economy, one whose output is artificially inflated by overconsuming the earth's natural capital.

Over-consuming means simply that we're doing too well and people are too comfortable -- based on their assumption of resource reserves (shrunk to fearful levels), their assumptions of the potential for future technical innovation (don't expect humankind to continue their never-ending quest for improvement much longer), and their idea of how you should live (not quite as well as they do).

Their solution? Dial back the economy. Live less well, and keep the third world from living better.

The other thing you need to know about EPI is that it appears to just make this stuff up.

When I read a study of global CO2 emissions that is saying things are worse than we thought and action is needed immediately, I would like -- not expect, but like -- to see some scientific justification for their finding.

Not one word on methodology. How many stations was data collected from? What methods of CO2 collection and analysis were followed? Were the collection points biased or balanced? How was the data truth-checked? How did the study's authors compensate for areas that they could access to check?

Not. One. Word.

What we apparently have here, folks, since EPI is so eager to hide is methodology, is the output of a computer model, not a study based on scientifically valid data collection.

That didn't stop AP and Kyodo from carrying the story. Do you think for a moment that the media would have behaved as graciously if the American Enterprise Institute had come out with a similarly provocative piece against global warming and provided no documentation?

Neither will the lack of reported methodology stop Warmies from sharpening up their index fingers so they can jab them at you. And it's not going to stop politicians from climbing up on the nearest soap box and proclaiming the study to the mountaintops, as if it were true or something.

And that's all going to cause you to have a splitting headache.

Update

Wooo Wooo aside, the research from EPI apparently proves at least one thing, and it's not what they set out to prove: The utter incompetence and failure of the global warming movement.

In 1896 a Swedish scientist published a new idea. As humanity burned fossil fuels such as coal, which added carbon dioxide gas to the Earth's atmosphere, we would raise the planet's average temperature.

Things got going in earnest in 1988 -- just a few years before Al Gore's vice presidency -- when we had a hot summer. Warmies tell us we can't go "Neener, neener!" every time there's a cold spell -- sorry, an isolated weather event -- but Wert traces the genesis of Warmie activism to just such an event:

The scientists' claims about climate change first caught wide public attention in the summer of 1988, the hottest on record till then. (Most since then have been hotter.) [Well, that's not true any more, since every year since 1998 has been cooler than 1998.]

So, with no fanfare, the Warmie movement is turning 20 this year. I'd bake it a cake but I don't want to squander the carbon.

And what's it got to show for two decades of global shouting, of grant-grabbing and headline-grabbing? If we are to believe EPI, the Warmie movement has nothing to show for it.

Despite all the Warmies' cajoling, threatening and fear-mongering, CO2 emissions are rising faster and faster.

So the Warmie movement has two bad explanations for what's going on, neither one of which you'll read anywhere in the MSM:

Either EPI's study is right and the Warmie movement has utterly failed. Or the EPI study is an outright fabrication, and the Warmie movement is doing all right.

There is a third option you might want to consider: The EPI study is an outright fabrication and the Warmie movement has utterly failed.

"Thank you for the "Voice of the Victims films. The students really liked them, and it means so much to them to hear real stories and not watch a cheesy drama like so many other videos."
— High school teacher.